Greater Good Haiti

I have been living and working in Haiti, on The island of La Gonave, in the town of Anse A Galtes for some 20 months. When I need to go to Port au Prince for a variety of reasons: to fly out, make purchases, do some banking or meet with people, I must stay over night, sometimes two nights.

Having lived in the company of Haitians, (most Americans live in compounds with other Americans) I have come to know a few Haitians whom I can call on as friends. One such couple of friends is Twenty (Wismy is his given name) and his girl friend Ketlie. Twenty and Ketlie graciously open their doors to me and offer me a bed to sleep on when I am in Port au Prince. They are young by our standards at 24 but by Haitian standards they are four years beyond the median age. Neither of them are gainfully employed since the earthquake of January 12,2010. Money is earned through odd jobs, running errands; Ketlie is a trained beautician and occasionally has a client.

They, like over a million others were displaced in January 12th 2010 when the 7.1 earthquake destroyed so much of Port au Prince. Twenty and Ketlie have been living in a tent city since the earthquake. Their tent city, Trazeli is home to more than 3,000 people living in some 500 tents on about an acre of land in the Tabarre District of Port au Prince, near the airport. I have had opportunity to stay with them there on numerous occasions and have brought other visitors to stay as well. It is a humbling experience that I will never forget.

It will be two years since that quake in January. I am baffled as to how these people have lasted so long in these conditions. While some have given up and returned to their family villages and towns to assimilate back into the extreme poverty of rural life, others hold on to the hope that they will be given reparations and eventually be able to rebuild or relocate within Port au Prince where they can maintain the possibility of work, maintain the dream of something more metropolitan, more 20th century and more financially upwardly mobile.

There is little to no work in rural Haiti. The Haitian government has been under pressure to demonstrate post quake progress to the global community so they have begun removing tent dwellers from public places such as plazas and city parks, giving the equivalent of $500 US and an eviction. There are rumors that landowners are in negotiations with the government in order to offer the same to people in tent cities, which occupy privately owned lands. Twenty and Ketlie are hanging on, hoping. Trazeli is on private property. While $500 seems like a large sum, it is only per tent, not per person. In many cases there are 3 or 4 adults living in one tent, the problem is evident. When I ask what people will do, Twenty tells me there is not really much anyone can do, just accept the circumstances and carry on. I wonder how long Haitians will be accepting circumstances and carrying on, it seems like a volatile situation, which could escalate into more civil unrest. Twenty says that he and Ketlie will stay until the end, he has a deep desire to see how the story will finish.

On one of my recent stays with Twenty and Ketlie I wrote the following piece, which I would like to share.

Tent City
Grey tarp walls like patchwork torn, sewn and frayed, all framed with scrap wood, poles and branches, shelters made of scavenged materials wrapped up in a tarp, chicken wire windows. I pass women sitting with forlorn looks selling crackers, sugar, candy and water while a friend, sister, neighbor comes and braids the hair of another. There are children running barefoot in filth, chickens pecking endlessly for any grain of sustenance, rib skinny dogs slinking along avoiding people searching for morsels. Laundry hung haphazardly on any surface in an attempt to dry, soiled again long before dressing someone. Clouds pass puffy and sterile like cotton against a Caribbean blue sky.

The scents become overpowering, urine; wafting through my nostrils pungent, sour, waning into the breeze. Plastic burning acrid and smoky, moldy mildew like laundry never quite dry. The air is thick so as to seem as if each scent of every thing is stuck in slow motion and blends together to become the singular smell of humanity.

Full sounds combine creating circumstance, children’s voices along with chirps of bird song rising to excitement and giggles, and farther out a baby cries, hungry and tired. Adults murmur and throw out the occasional, vinbalow . . . come hear, or komo e’w ye? . . . how are you?. I hear voices like the violins in orchestra, crescendo to argument force and heat only to retreat back into murmurs. The occasional horn accents the sounds the likes of Mack truck horn blasts, whomp whomb! A plane takes off in the distance, the roar like thunder in retreat. The sound of men playing soccer sails around on the breeze, a rooster crows, and a radio static and scratchy like the morning all a matter of circumstance.

The ground muddy and trodden, my feet sink and slip. I take the small soft soiled hands of children shouting “blan blan” eager for any response. The dust and smoke of this place covers me, my hair stiff like straw from the fumes and dust.

I sense myself as an outsider watching a movie while in it, a reality more like a dream, I walk through the tent “city” and wonder how all of this is happening. My heart is in tangible pain unable to comprehend what my senses are feeding me. Despair 23 months after the great January 12th goudou goudou (earthquake) displaced one million people into this unreal reality.